ISIS is winning. I say that with the utmost regret, but it is true. Bullets have not stopped it, nor have bombs or ground troops. States around the world have denounced ISIS’s radicalism from afar, but words are meaningless without any action. At a time when ISIS enslaves people, a new movement is determined to stop their cruelty once and for all.
The Genocide Initiative has launched a petition on change.org that calls on political powers to unite and proclaim the crimes being committed by ISIS as acts of religious, cultural, and ethnic genocide. While political entities such as the United Nations have proclaimed ISIS’s activities as “crimes against humanity,” few organizations or institutions have labeled the group’s actions for what they truly are: genocide.
Started by Islamic scholar Dr. John Andrew Morrow, poet Charles Upton, and Bishop Francis Kalabat of the Eastern Rite church, the Genocide Initiative is a coordinated interfaith effort to urge nations and human rights groups to stand up for Christians, Yazidis, Kurds, Sufis, and other religious groups facing genocide because of ISIS. The Initiative’s petition demands that local, regional, and international powers act to neutralize ISIS by cutting off their legs from under them. The plan is to systematically dismantle their networks, whether ideological, financial, political, or religious. Only a multi-faceted and comprehensive method of action will prevent ISIS from gaining more ground in the Middle East.
The Genocide Initiative is inspired by Dr. Morrow’s book The Covenants of the Prophet Muhammad with the Christians of the World. Muhammad’s treaties with Christians state that Muslims are not to attack peaceful Christian communities, but defend them “until the End of the World.” Morrow’s book directly appealed to all Muslims to condemn the violence against Christians in the name of Prophet Muhammad himself.
Morrow and his colleagues challenge international organizations, human rights groups, intelligence agencies, national security agencies, law enforcement agencies and military forces “to coordinate their efforts to locate, arrest, indict, try, and convict any and all parties responsible for supporting ISIS.” By signing the petition, these groups and organizations put pressure on elected officials and other representatives to stand against the evil of Takfirism — the latest heretical perversion of Islam. People of all religious backgrounds, as well as no religious backgrounds, must tackle Takfirism.
Christians and Muslims have signed the petition to fight the darkness of radicalism with solidarity and unshakable resolve. Once the petition has enough signatures, the Genocide Initiative will present the petition to world leaders, U.S. governors, human rights organizations and others to lobby for the request to categorize ISIS’s actions as genocide.
It is imperative that world leaders declare the actions of ISIS as genocide. Joining the Genocide Initiative and signing the petition is taking one step closer to ensuring that groups in the Middle East have a place to call home in the future.
craigconsidinetcd.com 
Agreed, what ISIS are doing is genocide but:
1. Hoping to dismantle their ideological and religious networks is unrealistic because
they are derived very directly from the examples of Mohammed and his immediate successors who were his companions before his death. There is a reason why 30,000 Muslims have flocked from around the world to join ISIS.
To take just one example, why should people who revere Mohammed, and aspire to follow his example, necessarily object to genocide? Here is Mohammed dealing with the Jewish tribe the Banu Qurayza (taken from ibn Ishaq’s biography of Mohammed, Sirat Rasoul Allah chapter 18).
“The apostle of Allah imprisoned the Qurayza in Medina while trenches were dug in the market place. Then he sent for the men and had their heads struck off so that they fell in the trenches. They were brought out in groups, and among them was Kab, the chief of the tribe. In number, they amounted to six or seven hundred, although some state it to have been eight or nine hundred. All were executed….Now the apostle distributed the property of the Banu Qurayza, as well as their women and children, to the Muslims, reserving one fifth for himself….The apostle dispatched an emissary to Najd with the prisoners, to barter them as slaves in exchange for horses and camels. The apostle of Allah selected one of the Jewish women, Ray¬hana, for himself, and she remained with him as his slave until she died.”
2. The covenants between Mohammed and Christians are a feeble foundation for this initiative. For one thing, Dr Morrow’s extensive scholarship fails to establish them as anything more than apocryphal. For another, the Christians they supposedly promise to defend until the end of the world are not just any Christians but only Christians under the protection, that is the domination, of the Islamic State.
3. Takfirism (declaring Muslims to be not Muslims) is not just the latest heretical perversion of Islam. It goes all the way back to the religious disputes between Mohammed’s immediate successors. In fact you could trace it right back to the source if you felt so inclined. This is Allah telling Mohammed how to treat half hearted Muslims:
“O Prophet! strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them; and their abode is hell, and evil is the destination.” (Koran 9:73)
LikeLike